Jim Zarroli

Jim Zarroli is a business reporter for NPR News, based at NPR's New York bureau.

He covers economics and business news including fiscal policy, the Federal Reserve, the job market and taxes

Over the years, he's reported on recessions and booms, crashes and rallies, and a long string of tax dodgers, insider traders and Ponzi schemers. He's been heavily involved in the coverage of the European debt crisis and the bank bailouts in the United States.

Prior to moving into his current role, Zarroli served as a New York-based general assignment reporter for NPR News. While in this position he covered the United Nations during the first Gulf War. Zarroli added to NPR's coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the London transit bombings and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Before joining the NPR in 1996, Zarroli worked for the Pittsburgh Press and wrote for various print publications.

Bill Gilmer remembers spending the night listening to the winds of Hurricane Ike tear through his suburban Houston neighborhood in September 2008. He also recalls waking up the next morning to hear something completely different.

"The first sound I heard was chainsaws, and I looked out and all my neighbors were out there clearing the streets, clearing their yards, cleaning up their yards," says Gilmer, who directs the Institute for Regional Forecasting at the University of Houston's C.T. Bauer College of Business.

When White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was pushed out of his job last week, it underscored the growing clout of President Trump's chief of staff, John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general.

And when Trump announced he was increasing U.S. troops in Afghanistan on Monday, after suggesting for years that he wouldn't, administration officials were quick to note that he was heeding the advice of "the generals."

When Donald Trump was running for president last year, he never failed to portray the U.S. economy in the direst terms, with sky-high jobless rates, an anemic manufacturing sector and huge trade deficits as far as the eye could see.

"Look, our country is stagnant. We've lost our jobs. We've lost our businesses. We're not making things anymore, relatively speaking," he said during one of the presidential debates.

The Dow Jones industrial average finished above 22,000 for the first time, buoyed by higher corporate profits and low unemployment.

The Dow, the most widely cited stock index in the world, closed Wednesday at a record of 22,016. It is now up 11 percent for the year and more than 20 percent since President Trump's election in November.

Defending President Trump on television is giving longtime conservative lawyer Jay Sekulow new prominence these days, but it's also reviving questions about a pair of charities he is involved with.

Sekulow, 61, who appeared on all five Sunday morning news shows over the weekend to address questions about Trump's ties to Russia, is a fixture in the Christian conservative movement, serving as chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice.